Nokia's proudly showing off the Symbian S^4 user interface to all and sundry, which is expected to fall onto phones sometime early next year. We may still be awaiting Symbian^3, but Symbian^4 looks like a breath of fresh UI air.

Anyone that's using a phone laden with the current Symbian^1 should be rejoicing at the sight of these images, which show a cleaner, more modern platform. It's almost taken inspiration from Android (in fact, the User Interface Concept Proposal actually compares the UI to Android), but you know as well as I do that pretty pictures have nothing on actually getting your hands on a running device. Lag is a prevalent problem with S60, though that's partly to do with hardware faults obviously.

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Symbian is building the latest version in Qt, and it will reportedly support touchscreen and hybrid phones. There's no word yet on whether you'll be able to update your phone with the OS when it's released—but as that's more than a year away, you should probably be on your way to a new handset anyway. I hope for your sakes. [Symbian via Twitter via Slashgear]